Nokia to offer unlimited music downloads... for free

If you buy a phone...

NokiaWorld Most mobiles have a music player nowadays, but most don’t come with a year's free and unlimited music downloads. Step up Nokia, which has just outlined just such a scheme, dubbed 'Comes With Music'.

The basic premise: buy a Nokia Music Store-compatible handset and you’ll be rewarded with access to an online library of tracks and allowed to download freely for 12 months. Currently, the only record label signed up is Universal, but Nokia claimed more will follow suit.

Users will be able to download the tracks either via their handset or a PC, and syncing songs from one device to the other will be possible too. Tracks will be in encoded WMA DRM format.

A Nokia spokesman told Register Hardware that the Finnish phone giant expects Comes With Music to go live in the second half of 2008. It has yet to decide which handsets will be branded 'Comes With Music', how it’ll be run and maintained, what will happen after your 12 months is up, and whether existing customers will be able to opt into the service.

However, he was very definite on the fact that new Nokia owners will be given full, free and unlimited access to the download service.

That's in stark contrast to the 80p-plus Apple charges for each track through the iTunes Music Store.